Garden of Ninfa, Cisterna de Latina, Italy. Photo by Wendy Dreaney.

… a great ring of ivy-mantled walls, within which lay curious mounds and hillocks, apparently made of flowers. Grey towers stood up out of them, ruins, all garlanded with green, and from the midst of this strange circle … a silver stream hurrying forth and traversing the Pontine marshes … Flowers crowd in through all the streets. They march in procession through the ruined churches, they climb up all the towers, they smile and nod to you out of every empty window-frame, they besiege all the doors … you fling yourself down into this ocean of flowers quite intoxicated by their fragrance, while, as in the most charming fairy-tale, the soul seems imprisoned and held by them. - Gregorovius, 1880